Will Young (left) listens to a pitch as Nick Sheth and Lindsey Thomas look at an app during Startup Weekend. Eight teams of about five people each created and pitched ideas combining fashion and technology.

Photo: James Tensuan, The Chronicle

Will Young (left) listens to a pitch as Nick Sheth and Lindsey...

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Splendid.ly's Dan Cheung (left) and Eric Goldberg high-five each other after they were declared winners.

Photo: James Tensuan, The Chronicle

Splendid.ly's Dan Cheung (left) and Eric Goldberg high-five each...

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Lona Alia Duncan of Stylend reacts as her team is chosen as one of the winners of the competition during the Startup Weekend on Sunday, Feb.17. The Startup Weekend featured companies focused on the intersection of fashion and technology whose apps were looked at by judges.

You might say that fashion and technology go together like oil and water, or, say, hoodies and Hermès. They aren't known to run in the same circles.

"Two ships passing in the night" is how SF FashTech co-founder Charles Belle described it when he and partner Mika Uehara were working on their fashion startup Lookaroo. They realized that the two groups were not only not coming together but that they were almost afraid of each other.

"The fashion side might not know how to code, so that's a black box for them," he says. "And the tech side might look at fashion and say, 'I don't understand this industry at all.' "

Two years later, Belle and Uehara are bridging the gap with SF FashTech, which paired with Startup Weekend for its first fashion-themed hackathon. Eight teams of roughly five people each, mixed among developers, designers and the business-minded, convened at Westfield Labs to create and pitch their ideas Feb. 15.

Startup Weekend is a Seattle nonprofit that has hosted more than 1,000 events in 110 countries. That they chose San Francisco, known more for high tech than high fashion, to be the so-called "fashtech" guinea pig might come as a surprise. But to the sponsors, it made perfect sense.

Co-sponsor Westfield Labs, which is part of Australia's Westfield Group, came to the city in October. It focuses on innovation in retail and connecting digital shoppers with the physical world, and the location was no accident.

"We believe that San Francisco is the heart of innovation," says Lindsey Thomas, vice president of marketing and communications at Westfield Labs. "We're an Australian-based company, and there's a reason that it made sense to have the teams be here."

John Beadle, the regional operations manager for Startup Weekend, and this event's facilitator, was excited to try a fashion theme. He and Belle intentionally left the definition a little vague to see what ideas were produced. His role was to make sure the program runs according to Startup Weekend's prescribed layout. It's the organizers - namely, Belle and Uehara - who brought in the right judges, mentors and attendees.

Thankfully, they had a pretty well-developed Rolodex.

In January 2012, after SF FashTech's work on its fashion app revealed a lack of communication between the two industries, they put together a panel discussion called FashTech Insight. With panelists including Vineet Buch of Google Shopping, Susan Gregg Koger of ModCloth and Jess Lee of Polyvore, the event sold out.

Most importantly, Belle says, both fashion and tech folks showed up and said, "We want more." So they shelved the mobile app and focused on a multimedia company, SF FashTech, to provide online content and opportunities for the groups to connect in person.

Which brings us to Feb. 15. Startup Weekend participants had one minute to persuade the 100 attendees not only to vote to develop their idea during the weekend but also to join their team. Some teams worked through the night. (Beadle recommends against it.) Some had worked together before, but many were strangers.

Ideas ranged from a peer-to-peer dress-sharing service to a site dedicated to connecting emerging designers with consumers. Prizes included mentoring sessions with judges like Sugar, whose opening speech on Friday encouraged teams to use PopSugar Shopping's (formerly ShopStyle) application programming interface.

Zappos' Young was also looking for ideas.

"I'm biased in a couple things. Like, could Zappos use that? And could I, as a consumer, use that?" He said that although the company is in Las Vegas, one of the big reasons it opened an office in San Francisco two years ago was to work with startups.

Top honors went to Splendid.ly (splendidly.launchrock.com), designed to create "a simple list of things you want to buy later that you can take anywhere," according to the team. It works like this: Save URLs of items you want to a "smart" shopping list that is accessible online or on your phone, then click to buy from that list any time.

Judges liked that it was fully operational and "had legs," according to Young. But the Splendid.ly team was most excited about the opportunity to collaborate. "We just wanted to hack together something interesting, cool and simple," said member George Revutsky. And Janet Hu said she got five other business ideas in the process.

Westfield's Thomas says events like these are great for the industry. "I love that the lens is on fashion and tech - that's showing that this is really a space to innovate and a space that has a lot of attention, so the more you can put a spotlight on it, the better it is for all of us."

San Francisco's event comes on the heels of two other fashion and technology-themed hackathons in New York. The Council of Fashion Designers of America, IMG and Condé Nast, then Hearst (which owns The Chronicle) - both brought teams together this month to develop ideas that merge fashion and technology.

And here's a fashion forecast: In his closing remarks, Belle promised the audience that SF FashTech is already looking forward to planning the next one.